Smoke billows from a fire at Vistra Energy’s Moss Landing battery storage facility in California on January 17.
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A fire at the world’s largest battery storage plant in California destroyed 300 megawatts of energy storage, forced the evacuation of 1,200 nearby residents and released plumes of smoke that could pose a health threat to humans and wildlife. The incident knocked out 2 percent of California’s energy storage capacity, which the state relies on as part of its transition to using more renewable energy and less fossil fuels.
The fire started on the evening of January 16, burning a concrete building filled with lithium batteries at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in Monterey County, California. Other buildings on the site, including more battery storage facilities and a natural gas plant, were not damaged. In the early hours of January 17, local authorities reported minimal fire and smoke.
“This is really much more than a fire, it’s a wake-up call for this industry,” he said. Glenn ChurchA member of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors at a press conference. “If we’re going to move forward with sustainable energy, we need a safe battery system.” After the press conference on the morning of January 17, the fire it flared up again that eveningleading to the extension of the evacuation order.
Because lithium fires burn at high temperatures and emit toxic substances such as hydrogen fluoride, firefighters allow this type of fire to burn out instead of directly tackling it. No injuries were reported in connection with the fire, and air monitoring systems did not detect any signs of hydrogen fluoride. But the fire’s smoke plume is likely to contain heavy metals and PFASs, known as perennial chemicals, he says Dustin Mulvaney at California San Jose State University.
Local officials are currently being advised Monterey County residents to stay indoors and keep doors and windows closed. Inhaled heavy metals and PFAS It can be a health risk for the local residents and farm workers. Those substances can also affect wildlife, such as sea otters that live in the nearby Elkhorn Slough salt marshes, Mulvaney says.
The destroyed building was one of the Moss Landing battery facilities owned by the Texas company Vistra Energy. In the past, its facilities had not experienced more serious incidents, including overheating of batteries and failure of the fire extinguishing system. But the facility that caught fire this week has a water-based removal system and it’s unclear why it failed, Vistra Energy officials said at a news conference. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Despite this fact, battery systems in utility grids for electric grids have experienced a 97% decline worldwide, often related to fires, between 2018 and 2023, according to one. the report By the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC.
“This dramatic decline has been seen despite utility-scale storage deployments continuing to grow at high rates,” he says. Maria Chavez In Union of Concerned Scientists. “Battery storage systems are designed with a number of safety features aimed at preventing and mitigating problems such as the risk of fire; unfortunately, accidents like the one at the Moss Landing facility can still happen.”
California is also better prepared than most U.S. states to respond to such incidents: It has a state law that requires local governments to develop emergency response plans with battery developers, Mulvaney says. He described the need to learn from such events to design future battery storage systems.
But losing most or all of Moss Landing’s 300-megawatt facility will dip into Vistra Energy’s overall 750-megawatt energy storage capacity and California’s total of 13,300 megawatts. energy storage capacity.
Moss Landing is serving the state’s electric grid by storing renewable energy and reducing reliance on fossil fuels like natural gas, Mulvaney says. Rebuilding and restoring battery capacity would take several years – A big ask, considering California is already in need of rebuilding elsewhere. Los Angeles fires.
“We can’t have a battery fire like this,” Mulvaney says. “We can’t lose 300 megawatts of batteries overnight like that.”
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